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WWP Online Messenger #51
February 26, 2003
Conservation Groups Move to Renew
Wolf Protection and
Stop Grazing in
Idaho's Sawtooth National Recreation Area
Western Watersheds Project and the Idaho Conservation
League have filed a motion in federal District Court in Boise to close several
livestock grazing allotments and protect wolves in Idaho's Sawtooth National
Recreation Area during the 2003 grazing season.
WWP and ICL contend that the U.S. Forest Service has not
met a court-ordered timetable for environmental reviews of eight allotments
identified as "problem" areas for grazing in the SNRA. These allotments are
primarily in the Sawtooth Valley, where sheep operators have had a long
history of management violations.
Last year, sheep were repeatedly found in areas that are
closed to grazing. The discovery reinforces WWP and ICL's claim that many SNRA
grazing permittees violated the terms and conditions of their permits in 2001
and 2002.
WWP and ICL also want the court to renew an injunction
issued last summer that protects wolves from "predator control" actions due to
conflicts with livestock in the SNRA. The previous injunction, issued July 19,
2002 by District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill, expired at the end of the 2002
grazing season.
Citing violations by the Forest Service in its
management of the SNRA, Winmill ruled that wolves in the area could not be
killed even if predations of livestock occur.
"Now is the deadline to close these allotments or stop
killing wolves in the SNRA," said WWP executive director Jon Marvel.
"Even with the judge's ruling last year, the Forest
Service has done nothing to alter livestock grazing in the SNRA to help keep
sheep off the wolves' dinner table and wolves off the Wildlife Services' hit
list," said ICL's Linn Kincannon. "We will continue to press for wolf
protection."
Recent monitoring indicates that wolves are in the SNRA
and surrounding areas, despite the fact that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
agents in April 2002 killed the entire Whitehawk pack of 11 wolves. Winmill's
decision last summer also bound the FWS to protect wolves in the SNRA.
Former FWS biologist Roy Heberger, who supervised the
wolf reintroduction program in Idaho, noted that at least two pairs of wolves
are known to be in the same areas occupied by the Whitehawk and other packs
exterminated due to conflicts with livestock.
"It is vital that these wolves and possible incipient
packs in and around the SNRA be protected from control actions, which would
only perpetuate the substantial impairment of SNRA values," Heberger said in a
declaration to the court. "It is certainly foreseeable that the wolves now
known to be present in and around the SNRA will come into conflicts with
livestock in coming months, absent significant changes in livestock grazing
management on the SNRA."
"The fact that these wolves are known to have been
present in and around the SNRA since the Whitehawk pack was killed underscores
the importance of ensuring against future wolf-livestock conflicts that would
trigger 'control' actions to kill wolves under the wolf reintroduction
program," said WWP counsel Laird Lucas.
The Forest Service's own monitoring reports for the 2002
grazing season reveal that livestock permittees continued to violate the terms
and conditions of their permits and allowed livestock to graze in areas
occupied by wolves.
In the past three years, at least 30 wolves have been
killed or removed from areas in or near the SNRA due to conflicts with
livestock. Some 4,470 sheep and 2,500 cattle are allowed to graze on 28 Forest
Service allotments in the SNRA despite the presence of wolves.
Montanan Artic
Grayling Lawsuit
Likely As Notice Letter Is Filed
On 2-10-03, the Center for Biological Diversity, Western
Watersheds Project and George Wuerthner filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect the Montana fluvial
arctic grayling under the Endangered Species Act. In 1994, the agency used a
loophole in the law to indefinitely delay listing of the grayling as an
endangered species while at the same time declaring that listing was
necessary. Since then the grayling has continued to decline and is now
threatened with rapid extinction.
Once found throughout the upper Missouri River drainage
above Great Falls, the fluvial arctic grayling has been reduced to a single
self-sustaining population in a short stretch of the Big Hole River above
Divide Dam. A primary factor in this range decline was dewatering of rivers
for irrigation. Continued irrigation in combination with four consecutive
years of drought have resulted in drastic declines in the remaining population
in the Big Hole River.
A member of the salmon family, arctic grayling are
widely distributed across Canada and Alaska. Populations of arctic grayling
have also been established in many lakes in Montana and other states, where
previously they did not exist. Historically, fluvial [i.e. river-dwelling]
populations of arctic grayling existed in only two places in the lower 48
states: Michigan and the upper Missouri River of Montana. The Michigan
population went extinct by the 1930s, and populations in Montana were
restricted to the Big Hole River by the end of the 1970s.
Federal Grazing Fee
Lawsuit Filed
In Washington D.C. BY WWP
And Seven Other Groups.
Eight citizen groups are suing the U.S. Forest
Service for failing to reform the fee charged for grazing livestock on
National Forests in the Western US. The 2003 grazing fee of $1.35 per month
for a cow and her calf is one tenth of market rates and is the minimum allowed
by regulation.
The extremely low grazing fee fails to cover the basic
administrative costs of the federal grazing program. In October 2002 the
Center for Biological Diversity released a report showing that the federal
grazing program costs taxpayers $124 million at a minimum, and likely as much
as $1 billion annually in subsidies and other costs after subtracting fee
receipts.
Over ten years ago, the US Departments of Agriculture
and Interior and the General Accounting Office established that the formula
used to calculate the fee is mathematically flawed, as it subtracts increases
in the costs of production twice. As a result the fee has barely risen above
the $1.35 minimum, while market rates on equivalent private ranchlands have
increased to almost 10 times greater.
The Forest Service proposed to reform the fee formula in
1994, but never announced a final decision on the reform, and kept on using
the flawed formula.
"The Forest Service charges about as much to run a cow
on public lands as it costs to feed a pet hamster. The U.S. taxpayer is being
fleeced by this bargain basement sale of public resources." stated Peter
Galvin, Conservation Biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity. Galvin
added "Livestock grazing on public lands is one of the major causes of
species endangerment in the U.S."
Joining the Center in this action are American Lands
Alliance, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Committee for the High Desert,
Forest Guardians, Oregon Natural Desert Association, the Nevada Outdoor
Recreation Association and Western Watersheds Project.
Bill Marlett, Oregon Natural Desert Association said
that: "Low grazing fees coupled with big federal deficits means that
monitoring and mitigation of cow-damaged rangelands will go neglected. It's
not just the American taxpayer who gets the shaft, but the streams, soils and
wildlife on all of our Western public lands."
Katie Fite, Conservation Director of the Committee for
the High Desert, added: "The livestock industry claims that public lands
ranchers have to invest more time and resources on federal lands than on
private rangeland. This may be true in some cases, but USDA research in the
mid 1990s showed that costs for private land ranchers average about $40 a cow
higher than for public lands ranchers - exactly the opposite of what industry
claims."
Charles Watson, of the Nevada Outdoor Recreation
Association added that: "The low fee has encouraged overgrazing, massive
erosion and invasion by noxious vegetation, leading to the huge fires that
have destroyed millions of dollars of private property in the West in recent
years. The Forest Service has known about the flaw in the fee formula for
years. It's high time they fixed it."
The lawsuit, which requires the Forest Service to make a
final decision on the reform of the grazing fee formula, was filed in Federal
District Court in Washington D.C. today, Wednesday Feb 26, and will be argued
by Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer and Glitzenstein.